Part 2

But he couldn't quite place himself with assurance on the scale of size. He was larger than some things, like the bowl of soup, and he was smaller than other things, like planets. He must be of a sort of medium size. But closer to the bowl of soup than the planet.

_A wife is a Martha._

He remembered thinking that just as the rockets had fired. It was in the song.... He whistled a few bars. _I had a good wife but I left her, oh, oh, oh, oh._

And it had something to do with the remembered--presence, when he was walking in the meadow.

But what was a Martha? You can't define a nonsense word in terms of another nonsense word. Or perhaps, he thought ruefully, you can't define it any _other_ way.

_A wife is a Martha. A wife is a Martha. A Martha is a wife._

Nothing.

But he felt the headache coming on again.

He went down to the galley again, and took the soup bowl with him. He put it in the washer, and rummaged around in the cabinets until he found the little white pills that helped his headaches. He took three of them before he went back up to the control room.

He had to make some kind of plans for--for what? Escape? He didn't want to escape. He was home. He wanted to stay here. But he had to deal with the--things, somehow. He wondered if they could be killed. There was no way to tell. If you killed one you couldn't see its body.

And he didn't have any weapons, at any rate. He would simply have to outsmart them. He wondered how smart they were. And how large. That would make a good deal of difference, how large they were.

He went to the viewport and cracked the shutter, just a little. It was dark. He didn't want to go out in the dark, that was too much. It would be too much risk. He would wait until morning.

In spite of the pills, the headache was getting worse, almost to the insane level it had been in the afternoon. He decided he'd better try to sleep.

3.

Colin and General Banning stood at the shoulder of the radio operator in Gila Base IV Central Control. It was just past midnight. Banning's fatigue was evident; Colin, having been involved a shorter time, still looked reasonably fresh.

Monotonously the radio tech droned: "Gila Control to _Phoenix I_ come in please. Gila Control to _Phoenix I_ come in please. Gila Control to _Phoenix I_ come in please." After every third repetition of the chant, he switched to Receive and briefly listened to the buzz and crackle from the overhead speakers.

"Gila Control to _Phoenix I_...."

"Is he still transmitting the distress code?" Colin asked.

"Yes, sir," the tech said. "But he could still reply if he wanted to. Distress operates from a separate transmitter on a single fixed frequency. The ordinary transmitter isn't tied up."

"Is he receiving?"

"I think so. When we gave him the 'Message coming' impulse, he switched to receive. That was hours ago."

"Maybe he's tuned to the wrong frequency," Banning suggested.

The tech looked up in surprise, then resumed his respectful attitude toward the brass. "No, sir. His rig is a self-tuner. The signal automatically tunes the receiver to the right frequency. He's getting it, all right."

"In other words," Colin said, "your voice is being broadcast on the ship's speakers."

"As far as I can tell."

"Mm."

Colin leaned back against a chart table and pulled on his pipe for a few moments.

"Please go on, sergeant," he said finally. "Keep trying. But change the patter to 'please reply,' would you?"

"What difference does that make?" Banning asked. "That's what 'come in' means, anyway. Same thing."

"Just an idea," Colin said. "Why don't you get some rest? You look beat."

"What kind of an idea?" Banning said, rubbing his forehead.

"Can you get a couple of cots brought to your office?"

"Yes, but what's your idea?"

"Come on along and I'll tell you about it," Colin said.

They left Central Control, with the voice of the sergeant sounding behind them, "_Gila Control to Phoenix I please reply. Gila Control...._"

Reaching Banning's office, Colin sent one of the ubiquitous armed guards after two cots.

"You can't shoot all your energy at once," he pointed out, when Banning protested he didn't need the sleep. "If we're going to get Harkins out of that ship, we're going to have to stay in pretty good shape ourselves."

"All right," Banning grumbled. He made coffee on the hot plate from the bottom drawer of his desk, grinning at Colin like a small boy caught stealing cookies. "I like a little coffee once in a while," he explained unnecessarily.

When they had settled themselves with the coffee, Banning asked, "All right, now. Why'd you change 'come in please' to 'please reply'?"

"It's less ambiguous," Colin said. "'Come in please' could mean several things."

"So? Anybody with as much radio experience as Harkins knows what 'Come in please' means."

"You're going to have to get used to the idea you're not dealing with Harkins in this. Take the point of view, this is somebody you've never seen before. Somebody you have to figure out from scratch."

"Mm. I suppose so. Okay, why the change?"

"Well--" Colin hesitated. "First of all, this--blindness is purely a functional block of some kind. There's nothing organically wrong with his vision."

"I'm still not sure I go along with your blind-deaf idea," the General said dubiously.

"I'm virtually certain, after seeing the film strip again. Your Colonel Harkins behaves exactly like a man being molested by something he can't see."

"For the sake of argument, then...." Banning nodded.

"All right. Presupposing he does not want to see human beings--for whatever reason--there are several mechanisms he could use."

"He didn't even have to come back," Banning pointed out.

"That's one of the mechanisms. But he _did_ come back. Why? Problem one, for the future. Mechanism two: Catalepsy. Suspension of _all_ sensation and consciousness."

"Obviously not the case."

"Right. Mechanism three," Colin went on, ticking the points off on his fingers, "_partial_ disorientation. Loss of perception of a single class of objects, human beings."

"Even that isn't entirely true," Banning said. "He _felt_ people."

"That's right. And I think this is our opening wedge. Of the possible means of avoidance I named, partial disorientation is the _least_ successful of all. It involves too many contradictions. He was disturbed by the microphones, for example. Why? Because they are meaningful only in a context of human beings. Communication. He would have to do some fancy twisting to avoid the notion of human beings. The same goes for any other human artifact. Somehow, in order to make the world 'reasonable' in his own terms, he has to explain the existence of these things, without admitting the existence of people who made and use them."

"Impossible."

"Very nearly. It means that some facet of his personality must be continually making decisions about what can be recognized and what cannot. His censoring mechanism is in a constant scramble to prevent certain data from reaching his conscious mind. It has to justify and explain away _all_ data which would eventually point to the existence of human beings."

"What the hell does he think _he_ is?" Banning asked angrily.

"I have no idea. Maybe that's problem two for the future. At any rate, as you pointed out, this is an impossible job. It must be infinitely more difficult now that he's on Earth, where there are so many more things to explain away. This is going to set up a terrific strain inside. It may break him."

"What would do that to a man?"

"I don't know that, either," Colin admitted. "Our first problem now is to get him out of the ship. And to do that, we have to contact him."

"This is why you changed to 'please reply'? What good is it going to do if he can't hear it, anyway?"

"That's the point. I think he _can_ hear it. He can't _recognize_ it, but that isn't quite the same thing. His eardrums still vibrate, the data gets in, all right. But it doesn't reach the conscious level. Fortunately, it isn't always necessary to be consciously aware of a stimulus before you can respond to it. Frequently a persistent stimulation just below the threshold of awareness will produce a response in the organism. Sub-threshold stimulation, it's called."

"Yeah," Banning said, "I've heard of it. Used it in advertising, didn't they?"

"For a while. Before Congress passed the Privacy Amendment."

"Okay. Now what?"

"Now we wait and see if it works. I'm going to take a nap. Wake me up if anything happens."

Colin stretched out on one of the cots, put his hands behind his head and soon was breathing deeply in an excellent imitation of sleep.

* * * * *

The clock on Banning's desk said 4:33 when his communicator chimed. Banning was off his cot and at the desk before the first soft echoes faded.

"Banning. Yes ... yes ... all right, right away."

"What is it?" Colin asked.

"They've got something from the _Phoenix_ at Control."

When they reached the radio room again, a different technician was on shift. He was intently watching an oscilloscope face on the board in front of him.

"What happened, did he answer?" the general asked.

"No, sir. But a few minutes ago we started getting a carrier wave on his transmission frequency."

Banning sighed disgustedly. "Is that all? Dammit!"

"What does that mean?" Colin asked.

"Not a damned thing," Banning said angrily. "He just threw the transmission switch, is all."

"Look, sir." The radioman pointed to the oscilloscope. The smooth sine of the carrier was slightly modulated now, uneven dips and jogs appearing rhythmically. "There's something coming through, but it's awfully damned faint, Sir."

"Run your sensitivity up," Banning ordered.

The radioman slowly twisted a knob, and the hiss-and-crackle coming through the speakers increased in volume until each snap was like a gunshot in the radio room. Colin winced at the noise.

"Maximum, sir."

"Increase your gain, then."

The technician did. The speakers were roaring now, filling the room. Very faintly behind the torrent of sound another sound could be heard, more regular. The rhythm corresponded with the jogging of the oscilloscope.

"That's it," Banning said. "But what the hell is it?"

"I don't--wait a minute," said Colin. "He's whistling! It's a tune."

"You recognize it?"

"No--no, it's vaguely familiar, but--"

"I know it, sir," the radioman said. "It's an old folksong, _The Quaker's Wooing_."

"Why is it so faint?" asked Colin.

"He must be a hell of a ways off-mike," said the tech. "Clear at the other end of the control room, I'd say."

"Turn down that damned noise," said Banning. The radioman twisted his controls back to medium range, and the thunderous hissing roar of the speakers died away.

"Well," said Banning, "nothing. We shoulda stood in bed."

"I'm not so sure," Colin answered. "After all, he _did_ start to transmit, and that's more than we've had since he landed. I think we'd better keep it up."

"All right. Keep at it, sergeant."

"Yes, sir."

As Colin and Banning turned away, the psychiatrist heard the sergeant begin to sing softly to himself. Suddenly Colin stopped and turned back to the man.

"What'd you say?" he demanded.

"Nothing, sir."

"What you were singing, that song."

"Oh, it was the one the colonel was whistling, sir. It gets to running around in your head. I'm sorry, it won't happen again."

"No, I want to know what the words are. What you just said."

"Well, it goes, I mean it starts out, I can't remember the whole--"

"Come _on_, man! Sing it!"

In an uncertain voice the radioman began to sing:

"_I had a true wife but I left her, oh, oh, oh, oh. And now I'm broken hearted, oh, oh, oh, oh. Well, if she's gone, I wouldn't mind her, Foldy roldy hey ding di do, Soon find one--_"

"That's enough, sergeant," Colin said, relaxing. He turned to Banning. "Well, General, that's it. The wedge goes in a little deeper."

"What do you mean?"

"Is Harkins married?"

"Yes, yes, I think so. She lives in the officer's quarters on base."

"Get her," Colin said.

"Now? My God man, it isn't even five--"

"Get her," Colin repeated. "Harkins has her on his mind. Maybe we can get to him through her."

* * * * *

Martha Harkins was a small brunette, too plain ever to be called pretty. Almost mousy, Colin thought. But intelligent, and quick to understand the situation, in spite of her nervousness. She sat on the opposite side of Banning's desk, her hands folded quietly in her lap, fingers twined, while Colin explained what they wanted her to do. Her still-sleepy eyes were fixed on her fingers while the psychiatrist talked.

"I--I think I see," she said hesitantly. "What it comes down to is that you want me to try to talk Dick out of _Phoenix I_."

Colin nodded. "It may not be easy. I've told you as much as we know about the condition of his mind. He will not consciously hear you, in all likelihood. We hope to appeal to deep-seated emotions below the conscious level. Are you willing to try?"

"Of course," she said with real surprise, looking up at him for the first time.

"Good," Colin said warmly. He stood from behind the desk. "We'll take you over to radio, now."

Banning was waiting for them in Central Control.

"Any change?" Colin asked.

"No. Same thing. Sometimes he comes closer to the mike. We can hear his footsteps. He seems to be wandering around the control room pretty aimlessly. Or maybe he's just carrying on the in-flight routine, we can't tell."

"This is Mrs. Harkins," Colin said. "General Banning."

"Thank you for coming, Mrs. Harkins," the general said. "I hope this isn't too difficult for you." He took her small hand in his own.

Martha Harkins smiled faintly. "A service wife gets used to just about everything, general."

"Unfortunately true. If you'll come with me, I'll introduce you to your technician. Has Dr. Meany explained what we want you to do?"

"Yes, I think so."

"Good."

"Just one thing, Mrs. Harkins," Colin put in. "This may take some time. It may be we'll want you to cut a tape with a request to leave the ship, if we can't get any response from live voice. Repetition is the important thing, and the sound of your voice."

"All right. I'll do whatever you say." She turned away briefly, but not before Colin saw the beginnings of tears in her eyes.

Banning led her over to the radio console, saw her seated and instructed in the use of the equipment, and returned to Colin.

"What do you think?" he said.

"She'll do."

"Will it work?"

"How the hell do I know?" the psychiatrist answered roughly.

They were silent for a moment, watching the small figure of the woman leaning forward tensely over the microphone, as if by her nearness she might make her husband hear.

"You know," Banning said musingly, "I get the feeling this is all the fault of SpaServ, somehow. Some little thing we overlooked. A little more training, maybe."

The woman's soft voice droned on, not quite carrying distinctly to the two men, though the warmth and urgency of it was evident in her tone.

"I think you did all right with your training," Colin said finally. "He came back, didn't he?"

4.

Harkins slept only lightly, turning restlessly in the large control chair. Finally the pain of his headache increased to the point he could no longer sleep at all, even lightly. Just before he wakened, he thought he heard a sound at once intolerably loud and somehow soothing. Which was impossible, of course.

Opening the viewport shutter a crack, he found the land outside lit ambiguously by the false dawn that was beginning to spread against the eastern hills.

He took several more of the white pills for his headache. Briefly he considered eating something, but abandoned the idea. The pain was so intense, he didn't think he could keep anything down.

He found the illusion he had noted yesterday--the whispering sound he could not hear when he tried--was still there. It was even worse now.

All about him was the flickering shadow of a sound, demanding his attention, requesting. And still--when he tried to hear it, it was gone.

He pressed his knuckles against his forehead and clenched his eyes tightly shut.

If only he had something to do to take his mind off the headache and the elusive sound.... But there was nothing to do. With neither the Skipdrive nor the atomics operating, he had not even the routine powerchecks to keep him occupied.

_Then why am I here?_

His function was to operate the ship. That much he knew without doubt. And he was well suited to operate it. His hands were properly shaped to manipulate the controls, and he could do it automatically, without thinking about it. He was Ship-Operator.

But the ship was not operating....

What was his function then, when the ship was not operating?

The other control devices, when not controlling, automatically shut off. Perhaps something had gone wrong in his shut-off relay.

That was not it, either. He was not the same as the other controlling mechanisms. He was different. Different materials, different potential functions in his structure, all kinds of differences.

But even if it were true that he was _not_ intended to switch off when not functioning as Ship-Operator, what was he to do?

_Think it out. Think this thing out very carefully._

Pain was a signal of improper functioning. All right. He was not functioning properly, then, and he knew it because of the level of pain in his head. If he could get rid of the headache, he would at the same time be finding his proper function.

Step one, then: Get rid of the headache. And he had to do that anyway, because he was unable to think clearly while he had it.

The headache had alleviated several times, then come back again. That meant he had performed properly, then drifted away into--into--Wrong was the word that came to his mind. Wrong. He had drifted into improper functioning, and the word for that was Wrong, and his headache had come back as a result.

All right. _When_ had the headache alleviated?

He tried to think back. The first time, the first time was when he had found himself speaking the meaningless words into the microphone, announcing his estimated time-to-destination. And then, when he had closed the viewports. And throwing that Receive switch....

What did these actions have in common? What factor did they share?

Only one thing. Two, really. First, they had some connection with the transmit-receive apparatus. Or two of the three did, at any rate. The other factor, shared by all three acts, was that they were done almost without his conscious will.

This, then, might be the critical factor. That he act without volition.

Relax. Completely. _Allow_ yourself to act.

He leaned back in the control chair and tried to blank his mind, tried not to give his body any commands.

_Without volition, without willing._

He closed his eyes.

For a long while there was nothing. Then he heard the whir of servomotors. He opened his eyes, delicately probed with his mind ... and the headache had lessened.

He glanced up at the console, to see what he had done. A red bulb glowed over the label AIRLOCK. He had thrown the airlock switch, then. And it had been the "proper function" for him, because the headache had lessened. But the out-of-range whispering had not diminished.

The airlock? He shook his head in puzzlement. But the technique seemed to be working. What now?

He closed his eyes again, and this time the delay was shorter. He knew before he looked what had happened. He had lowered the landing ladder.

Well, this began to be obvious. He was to leave the ship.

And yet, the headache had been worst when he _had_ left the ship. What did that mean? It seemed to mean leaving the ship was a Wrong function. But it was certainly indicated this time, from his opening of the airlock and lowering the ladder.

Well, what was Wrong function at one time might well be Right function another time. That could happen.

_Leave the ship...._

There was an edge of pleasantness and warmth to that thought, and the headache diminished.

"_Please leave the ship, Dick...._" It was almost as if he could hear a warmth in the air saying that to him.

Try the alternative. Deliberately he thought: _Stay in the ship_.

A flash of pain soared up the back of his head and across the top to settle swirling and agonizingly in his temples.

_Leave the ship_, he thought quickly, and the pain abated.

Clear enough.

He got to his feet and carefully made his way out of the control room down the catwalk toward the airlock that stood open and waiting to let him out of _Phoenix I_....

* * * * *

An excited non-com slammed open the door to the radio room and shouted, "The airlock's opening!"

Banning and Colin dashed to the broad window and stared out at the bulky shape of _Phoenix I_, resting monolithic on the landing pad. Banning took the proffered binoculars from the non-com, focussed them on the broad flank of the ship.

"It's open, all right," he said. "Here." He handed the binoculars to Colin.

After a long delay, the landing ladder slid down the side of the ship.

"I think he's going to come out."

"There he is."

"What's he doing?"

"Standing in the airlock, looking around. Now he's starting to come down. Now he's at the bottom of the ladder, looking around again.... Now he's walking this way."

"Give me the glasses," Banning said. He looked for a long moment, making sure the colonel's direction did not change. "Still coming this way," he said, putting the glasses carefully on the table by the window. He turned to look at the psychiatrist. "What now?"

Colin shrugged. "Get him."

"Sergeant!" Banning called. "Sergeant, take five men...."

* * * * *

The room in which they put him was comfortable and secure. Very secure. The bed was firmly welded to the wall, the table bolted to the floor. There was nothing movable or detachable in the room.

The three microphones picked up little but the shuffle of feet; cameras dutifully imprinted on film the image of a man pacing restlessly back and forth, examining the fixtures of the room without apparent anxiety or curiosity.

"No trouble at all," Banning answered Colin's question. "He didn't even see the patrol. Spray shot of Somnol in the arm and that was it."

"He doesn't seem particularly upset," Colin mused, watching the screen on which the lean figure of Colonel Harkins paced.

"Nervous," Banning said.

"Not as badly as the situation would warrant. I don't think it's getting through to him. He's apathetic."

"How did he react to seeing his wife?" Banning asked.

"Bewildered him. Gave him a hell of a headache."

"That all?"

"That's all."

"What now?"

Colin sighed. "Get through to him some way." He tamped tobacco in his pipe, his eyes still on the spyscreen. Harkins was now sitting on the bed, his hands immobile on his knees, staring straight ahead.

"How do you intend to do that?"

Colin reached for a pad of paper and began scribbling, talking as he wrote. "How are you feeding him?"

"Double door compartment. Put the food in, close the outside door, open the inside."

"Put this on his tray next time, will you?" Colin handed the general a slip of paper. On it was written a single sentence: _Richard Harkins, I want to talk to you._

"All right," Banning said, reading it. "He's due for lunch in about an hour."

* * * * *

On the screen, Colin could see the light come on over the food compartment, and the microphones picked up the sound of a bell. Harkins, who had not moved from the bed since his initial examination of the cubicle, looked up. The inner door of the compartment opened, revealing a tray with several steaming dishes, a pitcher of milk and a pot of coffee on a self-warm pad.

Harkins stood up. He looked at the food, walked over to the tiny open door and picked up the tray. Calmly he carried it over to the table, sat down, unfolded the napkin and put it in his lap.